Sophia Institute online Waldorf Certificate Studies Program

Course WC2 5

The Education of the Child in the Light of Anthroposophy - Part 2

Introduction

Rudolf Steiner published "The Education of the Child in the Light of Anthroposophy" in 1907.

In this publication Steiner presented the basis of the educational approach that later would become the foundation of what is today known as Waldorf Education, and has been developed from the beginnings of the first Waldorf School founded by Rudolf Steiner and Emil Molt in Stuttgart, Germany in 1919 to being today a worldwide movement that has established itself all over thee world as the most innovative and dynamic educational movement in our modern time.

In "The Education of the Child in the Light of Anthroposophy" Steiner developed first the basic ideas that later became the cornerstones of this new form of education. Steiner addresses the nurture versus nature and the clash of cultures and worldviews surrounding this theme from a spiritual point of view. Steiner presented the basic concepts of the essential nature of the human being in body, soul and spirit, and Steiner discusses the physical body, etheric body, astral body and ego. Steiner presents the background to what is truly age appropriate education with the idea that the child in growing up recapitulates the development of consciousness of humanity while going through stages or phases of incarnation. Steiner outlines the differing educational approaches necessary to teach children during early childhood, during the grade school years, during high school and during later life as an adult.

Study Material for this Lesson WC2 5 2.4.

"The Education of the Child in the Light of Anthroposophy" by Rudolf Steiner (Section 9)

Only the teacher who has a conscious and clear understanding of
how the several subjects and methods of education work upon the growing child,
can have the tact to meet every occasion that offers, in the right way. He has
to know how to treat the several faculties of the soul — Thinking, Feeling and
Willing, — so that their development may react on the etheric body, which in
this period between the change of teeth and puberty can attain more and more
perfect form under the influences that affect it from without.
By a right application of the
fundamental educational principles, during the first seven years of childhood,
the foundation is laid for the development of a strong and healthy Will.
For a strong and healthy will must have its support in the well-developed forms
of the physical body. Then, from the time of the change of teeth onwards, the
etheric body which is now developing must bring to the physical body those
forces whereby it can make its forms firm and inwardly complete. Whatever makes
the strongest impression on the etheric body, works also most powerfully
towards the consolidation of the physical body. The strongest of all the
impulses that can work on the etheric body, come from the feelings and thoughts
by which man divines and experiences in consciousness his relation to the
Everlasting Powers. That is to say, they are those that come from religious
experience. Never will a man's will, nor in consequence his character, develop
healthily, if he is not able in this period of childhood to receive religious
impulses deep into his soul. How a man feels his place and part in the
universal Whole, — this will find expression in the unity of his life of will.
If he does not feel himself linked by strong bonds to a Divine-spiritual, his
will and character must needs remain uncertain, divided and unsound.
The world of Feeling is
developed in the right way through the parables and pictures we have spoken of,
and especially through the pictures of great men and women, taken from History
and other sources, which we bring before the children. A correspondingly deep
study of the secrets and beauties of Nature is also important for the right
formation of the world of feeling. Last but not least, there is the cultivation
of the sense of beauty and the awakening of the artistic feeling. The musical
element must bring to the etheric body that rhythm which will then enable it to
sense in all things the rhythm otherwise concealed. A child who is denied the
blessing of having his musical sense cultivated during these years, will be the
poorer for it the whole of his later life. If this sense were entirely lacking
in him, whole aspects of the world's existence would of necessity remain hidden
from him. Nor are the other arts to be neglected. The awakening of the feeling
for architectural forms, for molding and sculpture, for lines and for design,
for color harmonies — none of these should be left out of the plan of
education. However simple life has to be under certain circumstances, the
objection can never hold that the circumstances do not allow of anything being
done in this direction. Much can be done with the simplest means, if only the
teacher himself has the right artistic feeling. Joy and happiness in living, a
love of all existence, a power and energy for work — such are among the
lifelong results of a right cultivation of the feeling for beauty and for art.
The relationship of man to man, how noble, how beautiful it becomes under this
influence! Again, the moral sense, which is also being formed in the child
during these years through the pictures of life that are placed before him, through
the authorities to whom he looks up, — this moral sense becomes assured, if the
child out of his own sense of beauty feels the good to be at the same time
beautiful, the bad to be at the same time ugly. Thought in its proper form, as an inner life lived in abstract
concepts, must remain still in the background during this period of childhood.
It must develop as it were of itself, uninfluenced from without, while life and
the secrets of nature are being unfolded in parable and picture. Thus between the
seventh year and puberty, thought must be growing, the faculty of judgement
ripening, in among the other experiences of the soul; so that after puberty is
reached, the youth may become able to form quite independently his own opinions
on the things of life and knowledge. The less the direct influence on the
development of judgement in earlier years, and the more a good indirect
influence is brought to bear through the development of the other faculties of
soul, the better it is for the whole of later life.
The spiritual knowledge of
Anthroposophy affords the true foundations, not only for spiritual and mental
education, but for physical. This may be illustrated by reference to children's
games and gymnastic exercises. Just as love and joy should permeate the
surroundings of the child in the earliest years of life, so through physical
exercises the growing etheric body should experience an inner feeling of its
own growth, of its ever increasing strength. Gymnastic exercises, for instance,
should be of such a nature that each movement, each step, gives rise to the
feeling within the child: ‘I feel growing strength in me.’ This feeling must
take possession of the child as a healthy sense of inner happiness and ease. To
think out gymnastic exercises from this point of view requires more than an
intellectual knowledge of human anatomy and physiology. It requires an intimate
intuitive knowledge of the connection of the sense of happiness and ease with
the positions and movements of the human body — a knowledge that is not merely
intellectual, but permeated with feeling. Whoever arranges such exercises must
be able to experience in himself how one movement and position of the limbs
produces a happy and easy feeling of strength, another, as it were, an inner
loss of strength. ... To teach gymnastics and other physical exercises with
these things in view, the teacher will require what Anthroposophy alone — and
above all, the anthroposophical habit of mind — can give. He need not himself
see into the spiritual worlds at once, but he must have the understanding to
apply in life only what springs from spiritual knowledge. If the knowledge of
Anthroposophy were applied in practical spheres like education, the idle talk
that this knowledge has first to be proved would quickly disappear. Whoever
applies it correctly, will find that the knowledge of Anthroposophy proves
itself in life by making life strong and healthy. He will see it to be true in
that it holds good in life and practice, and in this he will find a proof stronger
than all the logical and so-called scientific arguments can afford. Spiritual
truths are best recognized in their fruits and not by what is called a proof,
be this ever so scientific; such proof can indeed hardly be more than logical
skirmishing.

Course Outline

The Education of the Child in the Light of Anthroposophy - Part 1Lesson 1.1.Lesson 1.2.Lesson 1.3.Lesson 1.4.Lesson 1.5.The Education of the Child in the Light of Anthroposophy - Part 2Lesson 2.1.Lesson 2.2.Lesson 2.3.Lesson 2.4.Lesson 2.5.

Tasks and Assignments

Please study the provided segment of "The Education of the Child in the Light of Anthroposophy." Then please turn to the tasks and assignments for this lesson that are listed below (in the submission form).